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Look Ma, No Script: What That Says About Me

PRESIDENT BUSH’S unvarnished lunchtime conversation with other world leaders last Monday in Russia produced no small amount of word-by-word analysis:

Just who are the “they” that the president believes need to “get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this”? The United Nations, some posit; Russia, others venture.

And did Mr. Bush address Prime Minister Tony Blair with a “Yo, Blair’’ or a “Yeah, Blair”? To this ear, it was clearly a “Yeah,’’ though perhaps a “Yeah” said in the spirit of a “Yo.”

But even if the tape of the conversation were perfectly clear, it would not be so clear what the snippets say about the president who cursed when speaking with another leader. Does his salty conversation portray him as a resolute and plain-spoken leader who does not get bogged down in wishy-washy diplospeak, as some say? Or does his bread-muffled voice confirm the view of him as a base and incurious cowboy with all the diplomatic finesse — and eating habits — of a Cossack, as others say?

It was just four minutes, after all, out of six years. Yes, the tape could conceivably fall into the bin of political history that includes the hours of recordings of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon, which give deep looks into each man’s character and way of doing business. But it’s far more likely that it will fall into what can best be described as the blooper bin, which includes moments that draw a lot of attention in their day but give historians less to work with.

Nixon famously and reluctantly provided 3,700 hours of tape from his inner sanctum, along with tens of thousands of pages of transcripts of conversations, which combined to blow any vestige of a strait-laced facade off his White House — and hastened the march toward impeachment. After Nixon, though, presidents tended to keep the candor well guarded, and so to the blooper bin we go for insight.

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FLIES ARE ... President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair in Russia last week, unaware that their conversation was soon to make its way around the world.Credit
Reuters

It is deep.

Mr. Bush’s predecessor was ensnared a couple of times by open mikes he thought were closed. In his primary campaign, Bill Clinton sat in front of a live television camera he thought was dead and seethed over the erroneous news that Jesse Jackson had endorsed Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa instead of him. Through gritted teeth Mr. Clinton said, “It’s an outrage, it’s a dirty, double-crossing, back-stabbing thing to do.”

It was a flash of Mr. Clinton’s dark temper, but not seared into the collective memory the way, say, a blue dress was.

Perhaps the most famous clip in the blooper bin features Ronald Reagan, who during a microphone check before a radio address joked: “My fellow Americans. I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.’’ Europe was not amused; but the incident highlighted two things about Reagan at once: his distaste for the Soviets, and his brand of humor.

Yet how can any of these snippets compare with the hours of recordings of Nixon, Kennedy and Johnson?

Kennedy, in an unintended recording, is revealed to be disappointed with the recruits to the Foreign Service because they were softies ill-suited to face dictators; men who “don’t seem to have cojones,” unlike, he said, Defense Department officials. “That’s all they’ve got,” he said of the latter, and added, “They haven’t any brains.” It showed Mr. Kennedy to be less decorous or politic than had been assumed.

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...ON THE WALL When he was running for president in 2000, Mr. Bush used a vulgarity to describe a reporter for The New York Times to his running mate, Dick Cheney.Credit
Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press

In the tapes from the Nixon administration, said the historian Robert Dallek, “What you see is how scathing and angry they are, how frustrated they are over their inability to dominate and control and make these other leaders or politicians or public officials bend to their will.” Nixon, Mr. Dallek added, “was paranoid as all get out; anti-Semitic — they would talk about African diplomats and call them cannibals.”

But as David Greenberg, author of “Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image,” pointed out, “the Nixon tapes are the granddaddy of them all.” And their existence — and the damage they did to Nixon — pretty much ensured that no president would again make the mistake of keeping vast archives of recordings. White Houses are better than ever at hiding the true humanity of presidents, so historians are glad to have the bloopers.

“Presidencies are constructed; there are whole teams of people who spend the day trying to make the president, Republican or Democrat, decisive or forward looking,” said Timothy Naftali, director of a program at the University of Virginia, which archives presidential recordings (www.whitehousetapes.org).

The Bush tape, Mr. Naftali said, pierced that veil with worthwhile insight into a particularly private president. “We got behind the facade of policy, and decisiveness, and got a sense of what emotions and prejudices were animating the president during the crisis in Lebanon,” he said. “Those are usually very hard to suss out.”

So we learned Mr. Bush truly believes that the Syrians can end the crisis in the Middle East. He seems to have a funny way with Mr. Blair. Some saw him as belittling to his counterpart, and distracted during a discussion about serious matters — at one point changing the subject to the knitwear Mr. Blair apparently gave him as a 60th-birthday present. But was that distraction or deflection as Mr. Blair tried to press Mr. Bush to sign off on a plan to dispatch an international force to the region?

Yes, we learned Mr. Bush speaks with his mouth full. But if you want an example of real bad manners, check out the tape on Mr. Naftali’s Web site of Johnson’s conversation with a suit maker: He burps loudly. Then he goes on to describe his own anatomy below the belt in ways this newspaper would not venture to characterize.

A version of this article appears in print on , on page WK4 of the New York edition with the headline: Look Ma, No Script: What That Says About Me. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe